► This dissertation examines two Buddhist critiques of the Veda and Vedic sacrifice that had long histories in Buddhist India, yet ended around the sixth century…
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▼ This dissertation examines two Buddhist critiques of the Veda and Vedic sacrifice that had long histories in Buddhist India, yet ended around the sixth century CE. The last document to inherit the critiques is the ninth Mīmāṃsā chapter of Bhāviveka’s (500-570 CE) Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā and its commentary, the Tarkajvālā.
From the earliest texts of their tradition, Buddhists sought to undermine the authority of the canonical Brahmin texts by questioning the integrity of its putative authors and denouncing the immorality of animal sacrifice. These critiques consistently recur in the subsequent Abhidharma literature and provide the basis for Buddhist criticism of the Mīmāṃsakas beginning in the fifth century CE.
The dissertation includes an overview of Bhāviveka’s long chapter on Mīmāṃsā in his Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā and reviews previous scholarly opinion on the identity of opponent of the chapter. It next examines how Bhāviveka employed each of the traditional critiques against the new opponent, demonstrating that he drew heavily on the Abhidharma and Sāṃkhya literature to counter the Mīmāṃsaka defense of the Veda and Vedic sacrifice, while adding new levels of specificity and sophistication. The dissertation goes on to explore how and why Buddhists such as Dharmakīrti and Śāntarakṣita discarded the old strategies and adopted a new one, declaring the authorless Veda to be unintelligible.
The dissertation concludes that Bhāviveka’s Mīmāṃsā chapter is a product of a transitional phase when Buddhists began to perceive the Mīmāṃsakas as a serious threat, resulting in a unique confrontation with Vedic orthodoxy and orthopraxy that drew on anti-Vedic sentiment across the boundaries of Buddhism and Brahmanism.
Advisors/Committee Members: Deshpande, Madhav (committee member), Trautmann, Thomas R (committee member), Lopez Jr., Donald S (committee member), Brose, Benjamin (committee member).

Ham, H. S. (2016). Buddhist Critiques of the Veda and Vedic Sacrifice: A Study of Bhāviveka’s Mīmāṃsā Chapter of the Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā and Tarkajvālā. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Michigan. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/120797

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Ham, Hyoung Seok. “Buddhist Critiques of the Veda and Vedic Sacrifice: A Study of Bhāviveka’s Mīmāṃsā Chapter of the Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā and Tarkajvālā.” 2016. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan. Accessed March 21, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/120797.

Ham HS. Buddhist Critiques of the Veda and Vedic Sacrifice: A Study of Bhāviveka’s Mīmāṃsā Chapter of the Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā and Tarkajvālā. [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Michigan; 2016. [cited 2019 Mar 21].
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/120797.

Council of Science Editors:

Ham HS. Buddhist Critiques of the Veda and Vedic Sacrifice: A Study of Bhāviveka’s Mīmāṃsā Chapter of the Madhyamakahṛdayakārikā and Tarkajvālā. [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Michigan; 2016. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/120797

University of Michigan

2.
Saul, Rufin Jamey.
Gods for the Modern Era: The Rise of Miracle Shrines in Northwestern India.

► This dissertation argues that the development of religious shrines offering miracles in northwestern India has been substantially facilitated by neoliberal reforms and concomitant social change…
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▼ This dissertation argues that the development of religious shrines offering miracles in northwestern India has been substantially facilitated by neoliberal reforms and concomitant social change over the past twenty years. The study focuses on Balaji, a local manifestation of the monkey god Hanuman, at two sites in Rajasthan respectively known as Salasar and Mehndipur. This dissertation intersects with scholarship across disciplines on new religious movements, the popularization of faith and miracles as instruments of personal advancement, and the construction of local histories from oral accounts.
Structured as a collective oral history, the research shifts between analyses of present-day devotion at shrines of miracles, the religious practices of devotees in their home locales, case studies of priests and faith healers, and anecdotes about how Hindu devotion has changed in recent history. In these accounts, respondents interpret modern socioeconomic change as cosmically preordained history resulting in societal corruption. Faith in Balaji is understood as a path for restoring an idealized moral society in which miracles are normal.
The historical backdrop of this study starts in 1990, when affluent merchants acclaimed Salasar Balaji and certain nearby deities as their hereditary guarantors of prosperity. These merchants also started urban devotional organizations based on their prior social and economic relationships. In the years of neoliberal reform, their prosperity and pious donations to Salasar's rulers, the Brahmins, spurred stories about miracles. This led to a new tradition of long pilgrimages on foot among farmers and townspeople from the region surrounding Salasar who were eager for a fast track to the good life.
Meanwhile, having a more decentralized form of local authority, Mehndipur became a magnet for faith healers attracted by the influx of pilgrims seeking relief from afflictions. From around 1996 on, this rising culture of pilgrimage spurred the establishment of many new faith healing shrines in Rajasthan. This study observes that healers have been pragmatically elevating their minor household spirits into miracle-granting gods to serve these new shrines. In the aftermath, this study documents the popular reification of Rajasthan as a reservoir of charismatic gurus and miracle shrines juxtaposed against a modernizing but decaying society.
Advisors/Committee Members: Mandair, Arvind-Pal Singh (committee member), Hull, Matthew (committee member), Bhatia, Varuni (committee member), Deshpande, Madhav (committee member), Lutgendorf, Philip (committee member).

Saul, R. J. (2013). Gods for the Modern Era: The Rise of Miracle Shrines in Northwestern India. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Michigan. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/102466

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Saul, Rufin Jamey. “Gods for the Modern Era: The Rise of Miracle Shrines in Northwestern India.” 2013. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan. Accessed March 21, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/102466.

► This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the contemporary “renaissance” of traditional Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh devotional music), including its performative, pedagogic, and soteriological spheres. This…
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▼ This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the contemporary “renaissance” of traditional Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh devotional music), including its performative, pedagogic, and soteriological spheres. This investigation uncovers the ideological and discursive apparatuses underlying this revival, revealing that they contain reformist tendencies that parallel those of 19th-20th century (post)colonial era-reform, which aimed to create a nationally independent Sikh identity. It examines the juxtaposing agendas within the contemporary revival, between preserving Sikh musical memory and reforming Sikh musical identity, questioning notions of authenticity, authority, and orthopraxy.
The Gurbani Kirtan renaissance began in the early 1990s with a realization that the traditional practices were approaching extinction. While some revivalists worked to preserve extant memory and practices, others perceived Gurbani Kirtan in need of systematic reform, so it could be institutionalized as a musical genre independent from Hindustani Sangeet. Problematically, the process of institutionalization has created orthopraxic prescriptions based on normative models, erasing the diversity of past operative practices, and replacing them with new histories. The divergent revivalist approaches taken to recover a near-lost Sikh musical identity have created much debate within the field, with competing narratives framed by various pedagogies, ideologies, and notions of authority and authenticity.
To give voice to the diverse perspectives within the renaissance, this dissertation employs extensive interviews with memory bearers, reformists, musicians, scholars, students, and innovative diasporic musicians. It also engages with traditional pedagogic methodologies and employs musicological analysis of extant vintage compositions to understand their historical and aesthetic value, suggesting that the Gurbani Kirtan tradition is a dynamic living entity that resists the imposition of modern standards, and instead offers avenues for future creations.
This dissertation raises issues of erasure and appropriation with the aim of recovering the heterogeneity of past operative practices from being subsumed by modern reformist agendas that homogenize Sikh identity into a normative standard. In questioning how Sikh musical knowledge has been propagated and authenticated since modernity, I propose a reassessment of what values and musical modes are indelible to the fabric of Gurbani Kirtan, what aspects are modern derivatives, and what aspects are negotiable as openings towards future scholarship, practices, and dialogue.
Advisors/Committee Members: Mandair, Arvind-Pal Singh (committee member), Ho, Meilu (committee member), Becker, Judith O. (committee member), Deshpande, Madhav (committee member), Bhogal, Balbinder Singh (committee member).

► This dissertation examines the nature of bidirectional influences in Bengali and English in the understudied bi/multilingual setting of West Bengal, India. Close contact between the…
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▼ This dissertation examines the nature of bidirectional influences in Bengali and English in the understudied bi/multilingual setting of West Bengal, India. Close contact between the two languages has resulted in extensive bilingualism in a section of the population. In order to get a better understanding of language change and development in this community, the following research questions are investigated: i) What types of contact effects are observable in Bengali today? ii) Which grammatical features in bilingual Bengali-English have changed under contact and which ones result from language-internal developments? iii) How can we ascertain that new properties found in bilingual Bengali-English are contact-induced? iv) What are the grammatical differences between monolingual and bilingual Bengali? These questions are addressed from both diachronic and synchronic standpoints. Two corpora of spoken monolingual and bilingual Bengali, collected and compiled through fieldwork in India, were compared with nineteenth-century Bengali plays for a set of linguistic features, following the methodology of Thomason (2001). Further, a corpus of English speech was collected from Bengali-English bilinguals and analyzed to evaluate what types of changes occurred in English. This investigation has also been complemented with a quantitative analysis of the distribution of linguistic features in the corpora, following a variationist methodology (Poplack & Levey 2010). The findings indicate that English influence has led to extensive code-switching, heavy lexical borrowing in Bengali, and morphosyntactic changes in the domain of bilingual Bengali-English complex verbs, formed with English nouns or verbs and the ‘do’ verb from Bengali. Change was also identified in Bengali equational sentences, where a new meaning and position of the hocche ‘be’ verb, which was unattested in the nineteenth-century Bengali plays, were argued to emerge from multiple causation. The English data reveals slight divergences in the use of articles and progressive forms, which have resulted partially from interference from Bengali, but are mostly conditioned by bilingual speakers’ different proficiency levels in English. These findings provide evidence for overall stability in the grammar of both languages (specifically for the subject pool that was tested in this dissertation), despite the presence of extensive bilingualism in the community.
Advisors/Committee Members: Baptista, Marlyse (committee member), Pires, Acrisio (committee member), Deshpande, Madhav (committee member), Thomason, Sarah G. (committee member).

Chatterjee, T. (2015). Bilingualism, Language Contact and Change: The Case of Bengali and English in India. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Michigan. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/113302

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Chatterjee, Tridha. “Bilingualism, Language Contact and Change: The Case of Bengali and English in India.” 2015. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan. Accessed March 21, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/113302.

MLA Handbook (7th Edition):

Chatterjee, Tridha. “Bilingualism, Language Contact and Change: The Case of Bengali and English in India.” 2015. Web. 21 Mar 2019.

Vancouver:

Chatterjee T. Bilingualism, Language Contact and Change: The Case of Bengali and English in India. [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Michigan; 2015. [cited 2019 Mar 21].
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/113302.

Council of Science Editors:

Chatterjee T. Bilingualism, Language Contact and Change: The Case of Bengali and English in India. [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Michigan; 2015. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/113302

5.
Fiordalis, David V.Miracles and Superhuman Powers in South Asian Buddhist Literature.

► Scholars have long been aware of the presence of marvelous events in Buddhist literature. While it is now more fashionable to speak about them, some…
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▼ Scholars have long been aware of the presence of marvelous events in Buddhist literature. While it is now more fashionable to speak about them, some still hesitate to use the word miracle in reference to Buddhism. Paying attention to how Buddhists defined their own terms, this dissertation argues that the concept of the miracle is appropriate to use in translating specific Buddhist terminology.
The present study examines the narrative and scholastic language Buddhists used to denote and classify various types of miracles and superhuman powers. Texts selected for analysis (preserved in Pāli and Sanskrit, but also in Tibetan and Chinese) span the history of South Asian Buddhist literature from the earliest extant canonical collections to narratives, commentaries, and scholastic treatises composed centuries later, covering a period from roughly the 2nd century B.C.E. to the 5th century C.E.
Buddhist typologies of miracles and superhuman powers distinguish between miracles and magic in order to argue for the unique authority and supreme holiness of the Buddha, and by extension, the superiority of his most exalted disciples, teachings and institutions. Though Buddhists debated the efficacy and meaning of displaying superhuman powers, they agreed that more than mere marvels or magic shows, miraculous displays of superhuman knowledge and power have religious significance. They generate faith among those who witness or hear accounts of them and lead people to achieve freedom from suffering.
Despite the theological intent behind the traditional Buddhist separation of magic and miracles, some South Asian Buddhist scriptures and treatises suggest that Buddhist miracles are ultimately neither: they are not simply techniques of power, nor are they the manifestation of a transcendent power beyond the natural order of things. Collapsing the dichotomy between miracles and magic, these scriptures invoke the metaphor of the Buddha as the greatest magician, who manipulates reality because magical illusion is itself a metaphor for the nature of reality. Thus, Buddhist miracles are exhibitions of techniques connected to the spiritual accomplishments of Buddhas, Arhats and Bodhisattvas, but at the same time, they become expressions of a truth that is not merely technical or mundane, but ultimately beyond ordinary conception.
Advisors/Committee Members: Gomez, Luis O. (committee member), Deshpande, Madhav (committee member), Hughes, Diane Owen (committee member), Jackson, Roger (committee member), Robson, James (committee member).

► Very little is known about the historical origins of Brahmin caste communities in India. The present study attempts to explain the origins of caste identity…
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▼ Very little is known about the historical origins of Brahmin caste communities in India. The present study attempts to explain the origins of caste identity among the Maithil Brahmin community of north Bihar, taking advantage of exceptionally rich primary sources maintained by the community over a period of six centuries. I examine the development of identity of the Maithil Brahmin community through the themes of genealogy, territory, and authority. I begin my analysis by investigating the creation of a corporate 'Maithil' identity that resulted from a census of Brahmins conducted by the king of Tirhut in the 14th century. This census formed the basis of a comprehensive genealogical record known as "panji prabandha", which was used for determining community identity through the enforcement of rules of endogamy by which the purity of the Brahmin caste was maintained. Genealogy was linked to territory by identifying a limited number of Brahmin patrilineages ("mula") descending from founding ancestors of particular villages. The territorial basis for Brahmin identity in Mithila was based upon the genealogical record. So also was the authority of Brahmins within the Maithil community, whose patrilineages were differentiated into three ranked grades, which were based upon internal criteria for measuring the status of individuals. Genealogy, territory, and authority converged to
produce the fourth aspect of identity among the Maithil Brahmins: kingship. When North Bihar was conquered by the Delhi Sultanate and the ruling dynasty of Tirhut fled, the Sultan appointed a high-ranking Maithil Brahmin to rule the region. From the 14th to 20th century, two successive Maithil Brahmin families governed Tirhut, who perpetuated the state-sponsored machinery of Brahmin genealogy and the regulation of marriage. The rise of a Brahmin to the position of 'king' further expanded the notion of Brahmin identity in Mithila by uniting the traditional tension in the relationship between Brahmin and king within the Brahmin caste. This dissertation shows that the practical attempt to recognize an individual as a 'Brahmin' in medieval Mithila led to the emergence of a renewed notion not only of 'Maithil' Brahmin identity, but also expanded traditional ideas of Brahmin identity.
Advisors/Committee Members: Trautmann, Thomas R. (committee member), Deshpande, Madhav (committee member), Suny, Ronald G. (committee member), Irvine, Judith T. (committee member), Sinha, Mrinalini (committee member).

Pandey, A. (2014). Recasting the Brahmin in Medieval Mithila: Origins of Caste Identity among the Maithil Brahmins of North Bihar. (Doctoral Dissertation). University of Michigan. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/110341

Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition):

Pandey, Anshuman. “Recasting the Brahmin in Medieval Mithila: Origins of Caste Identity among the Maithil Brahmins of North Bihar.” 2014. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan. Accessed March 21, 2019.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/110341.

Pandey A. Recasting the Brahmin in Medieval Mithila: Origins of Caste Identity among the Maithil Brahmins of North Bihar. [Internet] [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Michigan; 2014. [cited 2019 Mar 21].
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/110341.

Council of Science Editors:

Pandey A. Recasting the Brahmin in Medieval Mithila: Origins of Caste Identity among the Maithil Brahmins of North Bihar. [Doctoral Dissertation]. University of Michigan; 2014. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/110341